Saving Seafood

NOAA to implement new regs on Jonah crab fishery

November 14, 2019 — The profile of the humble Jonah crab, once considered mere bycatch in the lobster fishery, continues to rise.

On Dec. 19, NOAA Fisheries will implement new regulations that will sharpen the scope and definition of the Jonah crab fishery in federal waters by establishing permitting requirements and setting size and possession limits.

The new federal measures closely replicate Jonah crab fishery management plans already enacted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates Jonah crabs on an interstate level, and many East Coast states — including Massachusetts.

“The federal regulations that are being issued mirror those set in place by ASMFC when they released the Jonah Crab Fishery Management Plan in 2015,” said Derek Perry, a crab biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “More than 99% of Jonah crabs are caught in federal waters, so this is mostly a federal waters fishery.”

So, beginning on Dec. 12, only vessels with a federal American lobster trap or non-trap permit may retain Jonah crab in federal waters. The minimum size will be the same as set by Massachusetts for state waters — 4.75 inches across the carapace.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA Fisheries Sets Management Measures for the Jonah Crab Fishery

November 12, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has approved federal measures for the Jonah crab fishery that complement the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Jonah Crab.

Approved measures include:

Sector

Management Measure

Requirement

Commercial

Vessel permitting

Landing requires a federal lobster permit

Minimum size

4.75-inch (12.065-cm) carapace width

Broodstock protection

Prohibit retention of egg-bearing females

Incidental limit

Up to 1,000 crabs per trip

Incidental latch definition

Up to 50 percent of weight onboard

Dealer permitting and reporting

Federal dealer permit required and mandatory Federal dealer reporting

Recreational

Broodstock protection

Prohibit retention of egg-bearing females

Catch limit

50 crabs per day

Read the final rule as filed in the Federal Register and the permit holder bulletin available on our website.

How eating sea bass and crab can help Maine lobstermen

April 8, 2019 — A group of Rhode Island fishermen who witnessed southern New England’s near-shore lobster fishery evaporate and its offshore fishery diminish dramatically in their time on the water came to last month’s Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockland to give lobstermen here a bit of seasoned advice: Embrace ecosystem change while you’re in a good position to do so.

These southerly neighbors acknowledge the Maine lobster fishery is currently rockin’. Preliminary numbers released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources set the value of last year’s 119 million-pound lobster haul at $484.5 million, up from $438 million generated by 112 million pounds of lobster harvested in 2017. Both years are down, though, from the all-time high lobster landings of 132 million pounds (worth $541 million) set in 2016.

The two-species Rhode Island fishermen told their Maine counterparts they should be targeting are Jonah crab and black sea bass. The former have long lived in offshore waters in the Gulf of Maine and the latter, a tasty fish historically found in the mid-Atlantic region, are showing up farther north because of warming waters.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Jonah Crab Moves Mainstream In Gulf Of Maine After Decades As Lobster Bycatch

April 2, 2019 — Regulators are taking comments on plans to expand a lucrative new crab fishery that’s stirring interest in the Gulf of Maine.

Jonah crabs are a native species that, until recently, was mainly caught as bycatch – by accident – in lobster pots.

Now, as warming waters push the lobster fishery north, more fishermen – especially in southern New England – are targeting Jonah crabs on purpose to supplement their income.

New Hampshire Fish and Game biologist Josh Carloni says in Northern New England and the Gulf of Maine, lobster is still king – but that could change.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

Feds look to create Jonah crab fishery

March 22, 2019 — Fifteen years ago, the Jonah crab was barely an afterthought to fishermen and fishery managers alike.

When the crabs were considered at all, it was chiefly as unregulated bycatch to the American lobster industry. Untargeted and largely unloved by fishermen and unknown by consumers, the crabs became the living embodiment of a niche fishery.

But then something happened: landings of Jonah crabs exploded, from nearly 3 million pounds in 1994 to more than 17 million pounds in 2017 — with more than 70 percent of the haul coming out of Massachusetts waters. They are used as food, sometimes to substitute for the popular and more expensive Dungeness crab.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Comments on Proposed Measures for the Jonah Crab Fishery

March 21, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries seeks comments on proposed measures for the Jonah crab fishery that complement the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Jonah Crab.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission recommended these measures for managing Jonah crabs in federal waters. The management plan was initiated after an increase in landings.

Proposed measures include limiting Jonah crab harvest to those who already have a limited-access American lobster permit, a minimum size, protection for egg-bearing females, and incidental catch limits.These proposed regulations do not expand trap fishing effort. They propose to regulate the catch of Jonah crabs that is already occurring in the American lobster fishery.

For more details or to comment on the proposed measures, please read the rule as filed in the Federal Register and the draft environmental impact statement on our website.

As Lobsters Decline, Fishermen Switch to Jonah Crab

November 15, 2018 — The lobster industry in southern New England has been on the decline for decades. As waters warm, some lobster fishermen are adapting by switching their catch to Jonah crab, a crustacean once considered a trash species.

Mike Palombo is captain of a 72-foot lobster boat, but his main catch is crabs.

He leaves from the Sandwich Marina for three-day fishing trips, going out over 100 miles to haul traps in the Canyons. One day this fall, he and his crew returned with around 23,000 Jonah crab and 2,000 lobsters in big saltwater holding tanks. “It was a good trip, very productive,” he said.

Jonah crab are sturdy, hard-shelled creatures, with black-tipped claws. They’re about a pound apiece. You might not have heard of them, but Jonah crab are sustaining Southern New England fishermen left stranded by the decline of lobsters.

Tracy Pugh, a lobster biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said there’s been a drop in the lobster population south of the Cape, in part because the water temperature is rising. “The Southern New England lobsters are experiencing the bad aspects of climate change,” she said, “because they’re already in the southern extent of their range.”

Pugh says the warmer water is causing the lobsters to experience physiological stress. It’s also bringing in new diseases that affect lobster, and an uptick in predators like black seabass and tautog.

Read the full story at WCAI

How New England’s Jonah Crab Turned From Garbage To Delicacy

September 6, 2018 — The Jonah crab is a medium-sized crab, ranging from brownish to reddish to greyish, boasting big claws tipped with black. During the winter, when most of the year’s crabs are caught along the Atlantic coast from Maine down to Rhode Island, it has an exceedingly hard shell, requiring a hammer or a saw to open. It’s mostly served as a plate of the large claws, with someone else taking care of scoring and cracking them open for the customer.

If this reminds you of Florida’s famed stone crab, which sells for about $30 a pound, you’re on the right track; the two species are very similar in appearance and even flavor. And yet until just a few years ago, the Jonah crab cost about $0.50 a pound. Or it was free. “Lobstermen would pull them up and in most cases have no idea what to do with the things, so they’d usually just throw them back,” says Bryan Holden, a partner at Luke’s Lobster who’s been right at the forefront of the Jonah crab’s transformation. (Luke is his brother.)

Jonah crabs are attracted to the same bait as lobsters, and are equally as flummoxed by lobster traps, so for decades, they were simply a bycatch. Maybe the lobstermen would bring them home themselves, or sell them for basically nothing to the small seafood shacks that spring up along any coast. Until about four years ago, there was no Jonah crab industry: few were processing it, and hardly anyone besides those who make their living from the sea in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine had even heard of it.

Read the full story at Modern Farmer

CFRF Lobster & Jonah Crab Research Session 8/30/18

August 2, 2018 — The following was released by the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation:

Please join the CFRF and its collaborators for a Lobster and Jonah Crab Research Session on Thursday, August 30, 2018 from 4-6 PM at the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island. The Research Session will include:

  • Discussion of the Lobster and Jonah Crab Research Fleet, including reflections from participant fishermen, data summaries, plans for the future, and viewing of the project documentary video.
  • Presentations from collaborators at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries on Jonah crab size at sexual maturity and the sustainability of the Jonah crab fishery.
  • Presentations from lobster and Jonah crab stock assessment scientists at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center focusing on the use of the Research Fleet’s data in the lobster stock assessment and Jonah crab management plan.

To read more about the project and for project updates visit the project web page here.

RSVP to Aubrey at (401) 515-4892 or aellertson@cfrfoundation.org .

The research session is being held at the Commercial Fisheries Center of RI, Building 61B, URI East Farm Campus, Kingston, RI  (click here for directions).

Documents Released on Trump Administration Defense of National Monument Actions

July 25, 2018 — In today’s print edition, the Washington Post published an article by Juliet Eilperin on the Trump administration and national monuments. The article, based on internal documents from the Interior Department, was critical of senior officials for allegedly dismissing positive information on the benefits of national monuments.

The majority of the story focused on land-based monuments, but with regard to marine monuments, the Post reported that,“On Sept. 11, 2017, Randal Bowman, the lead staffer for the review, suggested deleting language that most fishing vessels near the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument ‘generated 5% or less of their annual landings from within the monument’ because it ‘undercuts the case for the ban being harmful.’”

Saving Seafood executive director Bob Vanasse was quoted in the article noting that “‘Trump administration officials have been more open to outside input than their predecessors.’ … ‘They had a lot of meetings with our folks but didn’t listen,’ he said of Obama officials, adding even some Massachusetts Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about the New England marine monument’s fishing restrictions.”

The article suggested that Mr. Bowman, a career Interior Department employee and not a Trump administration appointee, purposefully excised information from logbook data indicating that, on the whole, most vessels fishing near the monument generate just 5 percent of their landings from within the monument.

However, there are valid reasons to be cautious about the logbook-data driven 5 percent statistic. There are more sources available to characterize fishing activity – in addition to just logbooks, formally known as “vessel trip reports”, which was the sole source cited in the email referenced in the Post story. While, as the material references states, the information comes from NOAA and the fishery management councils so it can be presumed accurate, the context is missing.

An Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) survey identified recent (2014-2015) fishing activity within the boundaries of the National Monument that, if the Obama executive order is not reversed, will be closed to the fishery in the future. The results indicate that 12-14 percent of the offshore lobster fishery effort and 13-14 percent of revenue ($2.4-2.8 million annually) for the lobster and Jonah crab fishery comes from the area of the National Monument. This revenue is significantly higher than that derived from the vessel trip report (logbook) analysis, which is only about $0.7 million annually.

The document cited in the Post story correctly cites the $2.4-$2.8 million annual revenue in those fisheries, but it does not make clear the significant percentage of offshore revenue that comes from the monument area. Similarly, when the document cites $1.8 million from the Monument region annually (2010-2015), that includes only the $0.7 million lobster trap revenues derived from vessel trip reports, not the total indicated by the ASMFC survey for more recent years.

While it is generally accurate, if one looks at the entire fishing industry in the region, to make the statement that only a small number of vessels derive more than 5 percent of their revenue from the Monument area, for those vessels and fisheries that conduct significant portions of their operations in the monument area, the economic harm is significant.

Also, in a document attached to the story, a margin comment erroneously states that NOAA advised the Interior Department that the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for red crab was “revoked.” That is not the case. In 2009, the red crab fishery became the first MSC-certified fishery on the East Coast. The certification was never revoked. The certification expired because the participants in the fishery determined that the cost to pursue renewal of the certification exceeded the financial benefits they anticipated would arise from maintaining it, and they decided voluntarily to allow it to lapse.

Read the full Washington Post story

Read further coverage of this story from E&E News